CHAPTER 4

On the bus home that day, Chip was much more calm than he was earlier. Katherine was glad that Ming had managed to calm him down a bit, but he was still being unusually quiet for a thirteen year old boy.

The bus was always loud and obnoxious, but Katherine had learned by now how to tune it out. Jonah was sitting with one of his friends a few seat back, loudly arguing over something. Katherine could tell it was him because of his whiny voice.

"Katherine," said Chip suddenly. "I just thought of something."

"Yes?" asked Katherine, who was wishing that it wasn't Jonah's turn for their phone today. She had an itch to play Tetris.

"I was thinking about… well, you know how everyone has a birth certificate, so I thought maybe my parents would have mine and it could give us some info, you know?" Chip had said all of this very fast and very nervous, as if he afraid of what Katherine would think.

Katherine frowned. "Er, I don't know," she said, rubbing her chin. "Maybe."

"Just… come over with me," insisted Chip, "This could work."

Katherine shot a discreet look in Chip's direction and decided not to argue. He looked so determined and hopeful that she just nodded and agreed.

And so that's how she found herself sitting in front of a locked safe in the Winston's basement.

She had successfully shaken Jonah off by telling him that she and Chip had to work on a very important project and that he would just be a nuisance. Jonah finally gave in, but only after a few suspicious questions. Ever since the incident outside two nights ago, Jonah had been been clearly very wary of Katherine. He had been watching her with squinted eyes as if trying to figure her out. Katherine had tried to ignore it, but she seriously wanted to know what Jonah was thinking.

Katherine and Chip had already punched in a few random codes to the safe, including 12-34-56, but nothing had worked.

"How about 10-28-66?" Chip suggested after the ill-fated attempt at typing in 12-13-14 hadn't worked.

"Why?" asked Katherine, curious. Those numbers weren't typically grouped together.

"Dad's birthday. He would be the type to use his own birthday as a password," said Chip dismissively.

Katherine decided not to comment on Chip's clear bitterness and typed in the code, only to be rewarded with the same error noise they'd heard at least ten times.

Chip groaned. "What is it?" he demanded, frustration evident in his voice.

Katherine thought for a minute. Birthdays might be a good lead… "What about your mom's birthday?" she asked.

"7-23-64," Chip answered automatically.

Katherine punched in that code. Another error noise. "What's your birthday?" she asked.

"My birthday?"questioned Chip, and when Katherine nodded, he said, "September nineteenth, 1999- you don't think they'd actually-?"

His question was answered when the safe door unlocked after Katherine had entered the numbers. Chip closed his mouth, clearly surprised. But then he just buried his face in his hands. "Open it," he whispered, "I- I can't look."

Katherine looked at him in concern, and she could see that he was shaking rather alarmingly. This was clearly starting to affect him in a really bad way, and Katherine almost wanted to stalk upstairs and slug Chip's dad right in the jaw. She refrained from doing so, as that would not end well for her, and instead opened the safe as Chip had asked her to.

Katherine reached in her hand to feel a lot of papers. She pulled out the first few and was promptly disappointed.

"This is just stuff about buying your house," she said, and Chip uncovered his face and reached over with shaking hands.

"It might be connected, too," he said slowly, seriously. "My dad was bragging about what a great deal he got for the house, so maybe I was supposed to meet you here…"

Katherine couldn't help herself; she snorted. "Oh, come off it," she said, rolling her eyes. "I bet if you'd moved anywhere you'd have met an adopted kid. You're starting to sound like the people who think, I don't know, that 9/11 was an inside job-"

"But it was," said Chip, still in a very serious voice.

Katherine looked at him in bewilderment. "You actually think that?"

For a moment, Chip stared at her with the most serious look on his face. Then, he laughed. "Nope! But you fell for it!"

Katherine was glad to see that he wasn't so stressed out that he couldn't make jokes anymore. She reached into the safe again, pulling out more and more files that didn't interest either of them, among sure to keep them in a straight pile. Then, 3/4s of the way down, perhaps, they found it.

"Here it is," Katherine said, smoothing it out. It read BIRTH CERTIFICATE - Cook County, Illinois.

Chip leaned over, hands still slightly shaky as he took it from her.

"Charles Haddingford Winston the Third?" Katherine read in disbelief.

"Shut up," said Chip without any real malice. "I… I'm Charles Winston the Third, and I'm not even related to these people…"

Any desire Katherine had to make fun of him died down at that. She cleared her throat and said, as gently as she could, "You are, Chip. You are their family."

"I wish I wasn't sometimes," muttered Chip, curling his lip. Katherine sighed internally, and turned away to continue rifling through the papers.

"Happy Family Adoption Agency, huh?" she said, almost laughing.

"Ironic, isn't it." Chip reached over to grab the paper from her, but in the process of doing so, knocked over the stack of papers that Katherine had laid out.

Katherine glared at him, looking at the mess they would have to clean up. "You-"

"Oh, it's fine," said Chip dismissively. "Dad won't know if they're out of order. I don't care if he would, anyway."

"Well, we still have to clean it up," said Katherine. She reached out to pick up a small stack of papers, and out of the corner of her eye she spotted an orange sticky note. She peeled it off the ground and held it up to read it: James Reardon, (513 ) 555-0192. "Was this with the adoption or house stuff?" she asked, handing it over to Chip.

"No idea," Chip replied. "But…" He stood up, stepped over the mess of papers, and made his way over the cluster of coaches in the corner. He reached into a cabinet and pulled out a cordless phone, and it occurred to Katherine what he was going to do.

She stood up quickly and made her way over to stand next to him, but he had already punched in the number. "Chip, I don't think-" but she was interrupted as the phone rang.

It was on speakerphone, clearly, as after a few rings, a loud voice boomed out, "Federal Bureau of Investigations. This is James Reardon speaking."

Quick as a flash, Katherine reached over and severed the connection. This was going too far.

"What gives?" complained Chip, but he didn't try to redial.

"Listen," said Katherine, trying to be as convincing as possible. "I'm okay with all of this- your parents don't want you to know anything, so you have to be sneaky… but, come on, what do you think the FBI would have to do with you adoption? Maybe… what do parents do for a living?"

"Dad's a stockbroker, and Mom works at the furniture store," Chip muttered.

"So that sticky note probably didn't have anything to do with you," Katherine said reasonably, "This Reardon guy might just be involved with your dad's job or something. There's no reason for us to call him."

Chip still was holding onto the phone, but he didn't seem to have an answer for that. Finally, he put the phone back in the cabinet and sunk onto the nearest couch. "It's just… my parents aren't going to talk to me about it. So I can't even find out who I am I want to know. Who I am, I mean…"

"I understand," said Katherine sympathetically. "I do, too."

"You do?" Chip asked in amazement. Katherine smiled slightly.

"Well, yeah, I do," she said, sitting down next to him. "My parents are cool, and Jonah could be worse, but… you know, it's kinda sad. I'm just not connected to them in the same way they are to each other. So…"

Mom would often say sappy things when Katherine was little. For example, one time Mom was brushing Katherine's hair, and she said, "Your hair is so straight and shiny- I wonder who you got it from?" or perhaps "You run so fast- which side of the family do you think it came from?" Most parents were sappy with their kids, but for Katherine, being adopted just added another type of thing for her parents to embarrass her about.

But Katherine assumed that Chip's parents weren't like that.

"Today at school… Well, Ming got me thinking, and I was looking around for anybody who might look like me," Chip said, not looking Katherine in the eye. "And, I know it's weird, but I was looking for, you know, curly blonde hair or maybe long legs or whatever."

"Oh, so that's why you ran into that wall on the way to English," Katherine realized. It had been rather funny to see.

"Yup," sighed Chip, "Not my proudest moment."

"But… did you find anyone?" Katherine asked curiously.

"One kid," said Chip, "had my same type of curly hair- but it was so far away that I couldn't really tell what his face looked like. So, you know, it could just be a coincidence, a lot of people of curly blonde hair."

"I suppose," said Katherine. "But… you know that doing this won't help. You'll always have more and more questions."

Chip just shrugged. "I don't know. It's a start. And how do you know that, anyway? Have you ever tried to ask your parents anything?"

a/n: hey guys. dhjsgdhjs so i know i already broke my "every other friday" schedule so im real sorry about that bUT ANYWAY

katherine was always more calm and collected than jonah, so i feel like she'd have an easier time calming chip down than jonah did in found.

and, of course, the person chip is referring to is alex, his actual brother. but he doesn't know that yet…

oh and…. not me calling myself out with that comment about making your birthday as your password